Morrie’ affirms priority of love

Sunday

Mar 4, 2012 at 6:00 AMMar 4, 2012 at 1:51 PM

By Paul Kolas Telegram & Gazette REVIEWER

“When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” That’s what Morrie Schwartz (Michael Legge) tells his former student, Mitch Albom (Derek Broszeit), during the course of Pilgrim Soul Productions’ deeply affecting presentation of “Tuesdays With Morrie,” which premiered at the Singh Performance Center in Whitinsville Friday evening.

It’s a maxim that Morrie has taken to heart with profound wisdom, undaunted courage and an undiminished sense of humor. Based on Albom’s phenomenally successful 1997 memoir, and adapted by him and Jeffrey Hatcher for the stage, it details Schwartz’s terminal battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Having become close friends during Mitch’s student days at Brandeis University, where Morrie taught sociology, the two lose touch with each other for the next 16 years, Mitch becoming a successful sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press. When he sees Morrie on “Nightline” and learns that his former mentor is dying, Mitch visits Morrie at his home in Waltham on a Tuesday, a reunion that becomes a weekly ritual during Morrie’s final months.

It’s a rekindled relationship that Legge and Broszeit bring to life with brilliant precision and trenchant emotional honesty. Legge dispenses Morrie’s marvelous aphorisms with such wrenching tenderness and peerlessly timed wit that you may well be as transformed and edified as Mitch is.

Remarkably, “Tuesdays With Morrie” transcends being simply a how-to-live lecture full of lazy platitudes. It’s a story about growing up, an affirmation of the priority of love over everything else in our lives. Director Matthew J. Carr has a gift for bringing out the best in his actors, and one senses here that Legge and Broszeit are also bringing out the best in each other, a sly and wonderful echo of how their characters enrich each other as well. “Nightline” was the catalyst that, in retrospect, made Mitch and Morrie realize just how much they needed each other.

Alan Standrowicz’s slide show scenic design effectively depicts Mitch’s recollection of his self-absorbed college days at Brandeis and shows us the vibrant, popular college professor Morrie dancing around the stage.

Albom isn’t afraid to expose the shallow college boy, ambitious career climber, and floundering 30-something that preceded the mature and thoughtful man that emerged from Morrie’s guiding and loving hand. It’s a process that Broszeit depicts with moving vulnerability, most strikingly when he tells Morrie, “I’m afraid that if I lose you, I’ll lose myself.” It’s one of many moments that may put a lump in your throat.

Legge will break your heart as Morrie grows weaker, and he clings to each Tuesday with Mitch like a life raft with one more lesson to give before moving on. He also imparts Morrie’s sense of humor with equal sublimity. When Mitch finds all the food he brought on the previous Tuesday still uneaten in Morrie’s refrigerator, Morrie teases Mitch that he didn’t want to deprive him of the pleasure of bringing it.

One man is learning to embrace life, while the other is learning to embrace death. It’s a dichotomy connected by the love they have for each other. Legge and Broszeit make you feel that connection in every way imaginable in the smoothly orchestrated ebb and flow of their immaculate discourse. There is no intermission, and there is no need for one in this transfixing production. When Mitch lifts the dying Morrie in his arms with aching physical tenderness, you may feel compelled to run onstage and hug them both.